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September-October Challenge: New Amsterdam - in Three Deee

I think of this as "pre-apocalypse" ( "apocalypse" being Independence! ) - a time when the Brits were just happy fighting the Dutch or the French or anyone else - and even the odd American... (did I say odd?)
Anyway - the 3D New Amsterdam is already being done by the New Amsterdam History Center apparently, so I thought I'd have a rather more simplistic go at it. All I've done is a very basic height_field which approximates the land shape for now, as for the hills - it has no resemblence whatsoever - I'll improve on theh eight when I get around to it.
It's very dull at the moment, but here's the starting "placeholder"... it may take some time... but I hope to use the results for another entry later, perhaps.
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I have the basic untextured fort walls modelled and approximately placed - interesting shape. I've also image mapped the current street plan of the area onto the height field so I have points of reference. The height field is slightly modified and I've put in the "canals".
I'm largely working from the "Castello" plan but I don't expect to slavishly recreate every building to the details available in various images... we'll see...
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Hrm.
I modelled one "dutch" style of house so far and I've put in a "test" street of random sized ones(untextured). They're very roughly to scale, but it's hard to tell what size the original houses were. What it is telling me is that the 3D model is going to be rather uninteresting. I'll try some of the larger buildings individually and see if it raises it somewhat, but I suspect that I may drop this entry...
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Hokayyy.
Gathering all the data is steaming along. I've plotted almost all the building positions (all 370 odd of them!), a few to add, a few to correct. I have some generic garden walls and placeholder painted floor and textures.
What rather concerns me is scale - I'm going to have to go and measure things from a better source than google maps. By my reckoning even my small looking buildings are too large so something's wrong. It's curious to note that the NAHC don't seem to put a scale up on their google map tool either. Their model looks great (very Ketchuppy!) but I'm not convinced they haven't fudged the scale too! What I need is a good reference baseline using two junctions that exist today and then - something like the length of Wall Street from Broadway to Pearl Street. Ah well tomorrow's search.
Anyway, this entry is still secondary to the Movie Monster Mayhem one, I just needed a rest from my tablet!
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